We took every back road we could to get us to Turin Airport this morning. Stopping only for fuel when we had about 6km to go. Our practice run filling up with fuel in Alba had paid off – there were no issues today. Well at least as far as the hire car went.

But we did have a few challenges ahead of us that we had not factored in.

The helpful girl at the hire car company gave me the website to use to pay the parking fine I incurred when we visited the Castle Cavour last week. It took several goes for my payment to go through and only worked when I used PayPal. But at least that was now one less worry.

While we were waiting for the bus to take us from the airport to the bus depot in Turin, Mick discovered that he still had the keycard to our room in Barbaresco. We will need to find a PO tomorrow so we can return it.

Turin’s major bus depot was less than salubrious. It was raining as we got off our first bus, and we had a 90 minute wait until our next one.

So, we took the opportunity to have a ‘slow’ lunch at one of the few vacant tables at the only bar; slow so we didn’t have to stand outside in the rain. Our little home town of Dubbo has a better bus depot!!

We ended up in the very back seat of a very packed bus. It was drizzling with rain as we lined up to get on the bus, and we were both quite damp for the first hour or so. We have travelled on lots of Flix buses before – but this was not up to standard; there was no power for charging our phones – that was not working, the toilet on board – that was not working, the lights for reading – were not working!!!

The bus seemed to be on time, and we were hopeful of arriving before dark. We passed through some amazing countryside and through quite a few long tunnels – many of them over a kilometre in length.

As we approached the border of Italy and France we had to go through the longest tunnel we have ever been through.

The Fréjus Tunnel connects France and Italy – and it took us almost 12 minutes to pass through the 12 kilometres.

It runs under Col du Fréjus in the Cottian Alps between Modane in France and Bardonecchia in Italy. It is one of the major trans-Alpine transport routes between France and Italy being used for 80% of the commercial road traffic

And yes, most of the traffic was comprised of trucks.

We did have a thirty minutes break about an hour from our destination – and it was here that the customs officers took a close look at the luggage in the storage space of the bus.

This photo shows Mick and the Customs Officers near our bus. I did take a few other photos but was caught by one of the officers and he made me delete them from my phone. Oops!!

It was dark when we arrived, so I was glad that I had booked a transfer to collect us from the bus (for a huge fee). The trip was less than a kilometre walk. But, I’d figured that we would not feel like dragging our bags for 10+ minutes on old cobblestones at 7pm.

One problem – we did not know where we were to meet our driver.

I called the number I had been given and was able to eventually communicate our dilemma. Eventually we had a call from our driver – he was running late!!

He eventually arrived and drove us to our apartment building in the old part of town that is restricted to vehicles.

It looked perfect!!

We knew that the apartment I had booked was on the third floor, and that there was no lift. But we did not know that it looked like this – all the way to our apartment. And the smell was slightly worse.

Yes, not what either of us had expected.

But we managed to make it to the third floor. The rule in our family is that you must be able to manage your own bag/s: “If you pack it – you carry or drag it!!” And, I did. But I think Mick may have been having second thoughts about the couple of bottles of Italian wine he had in his bag to take home to Australia.

Next job was trying to get into the place.

Not that easy either. But Mick thankfully worked it out.

Once inside we were pleasantly surprised the find that the apartment did look like the photos and would be suitable for a two night stay. We filled the washing machine before heading out to get some groceries and to find somewhere for dinner.

We were only steps away from several restaurants, and after we had our few purchases from the supermarket, we enjoyed an amazing meal at a typical French restaurant, with a glass of French wine – and we finally felt quite at home.

Tomorrow we will explore this place further.